I wanted to make some multi-layered fabric flowers for my next necklace, and so I set about exploring several different ways that they could be made, including starting from squares and from strips. Much to my delight, I found that my friend Eileen Bergen, The Artful Crafter had already worked out some numbers for making bigger flowers from fabric strips. I started from there and made some prototypes until I got the sizes where I wanted them.
Some early prototypes and practice flowers
Visit Eileen's blog for the basic directions, and then my photos will make more sense. I decided to just take a little snip along the outside edge of each flower to indicate where the petal divisions would be, and then to stitch and gather them up before shaping the petals. Next time I do this, I might shape the petals first and then gather them, but I was still exploring shapes at this point.
Strips for making 5 flowers. My lace strips are 10 x 1 inches and the green fabric strips are 15 x 1-1/2 inches.
One strip is stitched along the long edge and gathered.
The ends are stitched together to form flower.
The petals are snipped and shaped.
The second fabric will form slightly bigger flowers than the lace ones. Leave long tails of thread for stitching the flowers into place later.
An 18 inch length of wired ribbon which I gathered to about 6 inches. This will be loosely rolled up and stitched to form a rose.
Part two soon!
Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
Copyright 2010 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.
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Comments
Thanks for the link, Cyndi.